


If I Didn't Care

by Missy



Category: Pennies From Heaven
Genre: Drama, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Movie(s), Prostitution, Secret Babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:24:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan does her Christian duty and pays Eileen a call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Didn't Care

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ladies' Bingo: Prompt: Secrets and Lies

Not a day passed by that Joan doesn’t think about what Arthur would say about her sudden windfall. Selling the shop he’d left behind to the state for a soup kitchen may have been a mercenary gesture, but it was a frugal one; the small pittance she’d won from his life insurance upon his execution wasn’t to be spoken of in polite company, but it helped her sleep better at night.

She gave: to the church, and to her local soup kitchen. It took her months of calm preparation to look up the address of the woman Arthur had run off with; that Eileen Everson woman, the one who had led him so far astray. But like a good Christian woman, she finally did so. Like a good Christian woman, she prepared a small pay-off for the girl. Arthur had, after all, led her to life of sin and degradation – everyone said so, and Joan wasn’t one to step out of line and disagree with ‘everyone’; even though she didn’t believe it. But it was better her neighbors saw her as a reformer instead of a flaming angel of justice.

*** 

Eileen lived in a musty-smelling flop-house near Grand Union, in a pink-papered room doused heavily in A Midnight In Paris perfume. The woman who answered the door at apartment twenty-two didn’t seem any happier to see Joan than Joan did to finally meet her in person.

“I don’t want any,” the Billiton blonde hovering in the doorway says, her lavender peignoir nearly worn through at the cuffs and heels. Joan took a faceful of cigarette smoke before realizing Eileen wasn’t going to let her in willingly. 

“I have some money. The money Arthur borrowed from you to fix the car,” she lied quickly, painlessly. Everything she knew, she knew from court records; he brief appearance had been no help to Arthur, none at all. To prove she was good for it, she pulled out a handful of g’s and waved them in the air.

Eileen glared at her, then at the money. “Better not do that in the hallway. The animals will eat you alive.”

She vacated the doorjam, which served as a hint to Joan. She moved quietly into the main room and stood, woodenly, in its center, while Eileen walked to the window with a lighter and a pack of Lucky Strikes, and started chain-smoking.

Long moments passed. Then: “You ruined him, y’know,” Eileen observed. A puff. Her cigarette smoke wreathes her hand like a mist, the stick of tobacco sparking like a conjurer’s staff. “If you’d put out a little more he wouldn’t’ve looked to a dollie like me to get his jollies.”

Before Joan could finish digesting that, a cry rent the air, setting her to watchful tenseness. It came from an open dresser drawer, and now Joan could see tiny fingers and toes waving from a pile of threadbare blankets. The baby let out another wail, and Eileen rushed to comfort her. Cooing seemed to settle the child quickly.

“You’re a good little girl,” she cooed. “A sweet little thing. Your daddy would be so proud of you.” Without looking up, she added, “I wouldn’t have kept this one, if I didn’t know it was his.”

Joan frowned. She knew about the previous abortion, thanks to court records; why would Eileen keep the baby now? Did she care that much about Arthur in the end?

Her plan formulated, then crystallized. “I’ve also come to arrange a proposal. We should move in together, for the child’s sake. I have enough to leave this town,” Joan explains. “You could start teaching again, and I’ll start keeping house; my father’s money’s back in my pocket, and I just know he’d approve. He never liked Arthur….” Eileen’s kohl-blackened eyes turned mean, and Joan swallowed hard. “But,” she continued on, “he wouldn’t turn out a baby.” 

“Why? Because he was decent?” she snorted. “Whattya know about decent?” Eileen growled, stubbing out her cigarette.

But they both knew she’d say yes, even as Eileen bristled against the yoke of fat that had doubled and tied them together. Joan didn’t like it all that much herself, but at least the baby would have a fighting chance now. That was more than Arthur had been given by life.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **Pennies from Heaven** , all of whom are the property of the **BBC**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
